Timeline 191
Timeline 191, is a nickname given to a Universe in which the Confederate States won the American Civil War and formed their own nation. This event had greater repercussion in the coming Decades, determining the outcomes of multiple wars, and the fate of Countries, resulting in a Communist United States while Russia became a Constitutional Monarchy. The First and Second War Between the States Before the Battle of Antietam, Federal troops accidentally recovered a copy of Special Order 191, which detailed Lee's plan for the invasion of Maryland. Using this intelligence, Federal forces under George B. McClellan moved north and forced the Battle of Antietam, ending the invasion. In this timeline, C.S. troops recovered Lee's orders before the papers fell into Union hands. The resulting C.S. advance catches McClellan and the Union Army by surprise. General Lee forces McClellan into a battle on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and destroys the Army of the Potomac in the Battle of Camp Hill on October 1, 1862. Shortly after the conclusion of the Battle of Camp Hill, C.S. general Braxton Bragg completes the conquest of Kentucky. The Meeting Men with strange accents and oddly-mottled clothing approached Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia. They demonstrated a rifle far superior to all other firearms of the time. The men called their organization "America Will Break" (or "AWB"). They offered to supply the Confederate Army with the rifles, which they referred to as AK-47s. The weapons operated on chemical and engineering principles that were unknown to Confederate military engineers. The AWB established a base in the little town of Rivington, North Carolina, making it into a combined fortress and arsenal. They also set up offices near the War Department, in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. The AWB continued to offer inexplicable intelligence and technology to the Confederacy, providing Lee with what they called nitroglycerin pills, which eased his frequent chest pains. Finally, Lee questioned their leader, Andries Rhoodie, who provided Lee a partially true explanation. The men of AWB are Afrikaner Neo-Nazi ultra-nationalists from the South African nation of Draka, having traveled back in time from 2014, 150 years into the future after the end of the Civil War. The newcomers claimed that white supremacy had not endured to the modern era and that blacks had marginalized whites. Lee was told that President Abraham Lincoln would act as a vicious tyrant during his second term and that his successor, Thaddeus Stevens, would continue his work to ensure that blacks would become the dominant political faction in the former Confederacy, as they outnumber whites in many areas. The AWB said that blacks would take over other countries, including the United Kingdom. The AWB men trained soldiers to use their new weapons and issue ammunition. As the men saw the power of the new weapons, the Confederate morale improved considerably in the campaign against Union forces. With the AWB's guns and some direct military aid from the time-traveling Afrikaner South Africans, the Army of Northern Virginia drove Union General Ulysses S. Grant's forces out of Virginia. The United Kingdom and France recognized the Confederacy. The two European nations forced mediation on the United States. While considering the mediation offer, Abraham Lincoln mentioned to the his Vampire Ally "Henry" that he has a proclamation that will free the slaves in the C.S. Lincoln has discussed the proclamation with his cabinet, but after the U.S. defeat at Camp Hill, they warned Lincoln that to have issued the proclamation would have been seen as acting in desperation. The Union at the time was ready to officially concede defeat. When Lincoln warned "Henry" that the C.S. only won due to the Aid of their mysterious allies, and the situation may change in the future if the Union can find such allies of its own, Henry scoffed that no other such allies currently exist. In a surprise night attack, the C.S. captured Washington City, thus ending the Civil War. To the amazement of most of the Confederate troops, Lincoln refused to flee the capital during their advance and appeared on the White House lawn, holding an Axe, which he promptly dropped as he fell on his knees. He addressed them before personally surrendering to Lee. Lee wanted to negotiate Secession, with the mobs howling for Abraham Lincoln's blood, it was safest for him to be taken into a comfortable custody at Richmond, Virginia from where he sent northwards a letter announcing his resignation and conceding the Confederacy's victory...Or that would have been, only for one of Lee's Vampiric allies to grab Lincoln's axe and decapitate him while he was on his knees. Lee was furious but could do nothing against the Vampire, a fact which the soldier gloated about. Lee vented his frustration to Rhoodie, who revealed they were aware of the Vampires and told Lee they would rise up to threaten humanity almost as much as the Blacks. He then began to share his knowledge of Vampire Weaknesses with Lee and his men. In Private, Lee was confronted by Henry, who revealed Lincoln to be a Hunter. Henry demonstrated his powers and convinced Lee the Vampire Menace he helped spread would need to be exterminated. Under Henry's guidance, Lee became a Vampire Hunter, wielding Lincoln's own axe. Meanwhile, Lincoln's Vice President, Asa Trenchard surrendered officially to the Confederacy. This "War of Secession" ended in less than two years. Post-War: American Changes Already there was tension between the CS and its allies. France and Britain despised the brutal slaughter of a surrendering foe, which reminded the two nations of the incident that began the Seven Years War. Lee realized he needed these allies if he were to face the Vampiric Threat. As more and more Vampires entered the country. To President Trenchard, fell the bitter work of negotiating the border with the newly independent CS. The most bitter pill he had to swallow was to concede the permanent loss of Washington and its transformation into the Confederate capital (with the District of Columbia being renamed the District of Dixie). As Confederate forces begin to end their occupation of Washington, and Union troops withdraw from the portions of the Confederacy that they had captured earlier in the war, the new country starts to determine its future social and political direction. In negotiations between the two countries, to which Lee is made a Confederate representative, the Union reluctantly agrees to pay millions of dollars in war reparations. The Confederacy, in turn, gives up any claim to Maryland and West Virginia. After much debate, both sides agree for Kentucky and Missourito hold elections to determine whether they will remain in the Union or secede and join the Confederacy. The two countries appoint Lee and his former opponent, Grant, to supervise the elections to ensure fairness. At one point, AWB men are caught smuggling weapons into Tompkinsville, Kentucky. When questioned, they disclaim any effort to affect the outcome of the elections. They claim to be selling weapons, which is highly unlikely because of the group's overwhelming wealth. Other supporters, both official and unofficial, pour into both states to try to sway voters. Despite an assassination attempt on Lee by a former slave in Louisville and the machinations of Rivington men, the election goes as planned, with Kentucky voting to join the Confederacy and Missouri voting to remain in the Union. Trenchard's main achievement was the retention of West Virginia in the Union as well as preventing pro-Confederate militias in Missouri from detaching that State. The Indian Territory remained an unresolved bone of contention. The pro-C.S. Five Civilized Tribes of the Indian Territory received territory of their own in the C.S., later to become the State of Sequoyah. In 1878 the C.S. purchased the Caribbean island of Cuba from Spain for $3,000,000, and admitted it as the 14th C.S. state. In the debate over the location of the new US capital, President Trenchard strongly opposed the proposal of making Philadelphia the capital, which would have alienated all the states west of the Alleghenies, and supported the finally-accepted compromise of Columbus, Ohio, which was renamed "Columbia". As he declined to run in the 1864 presidential election, Trenchard did not actually get to take residence in the new capital, which was only made ready years later. The Democratic Party candidate Horatio Seymour, and his running mate, Clement Vallandigham won the 1864 Election. Confederate slaves freed during the war by the US violently resist returning to slavery; many who made up US military units during the war continue to fight Confederate forces long after the Union formally surrenders. That frightens many Confederate whites and infuriates the troops charged with fighting them, particularly Benjamin "Forrest" Cameron and his men. Lee, already dubious about slavery and respectful of the courage of the United States Colored Troops during the war and knowing how freeing the Salves would harm the Vampires, became convinced that continuing to enslave blacks was both morally wrong and ultimately impracticable. He believed that it was impossible to try to return to prewar conditions. He thought that black guerrillas would continue to raid and perhaps prompt a general slave rebellion in the near future. The parts of the Confederacy that had fallen to the US during the war had already lost many of their slaves, who were freed as soon as the US troops had arrived and did not return to their previous masters. In other parts of the Confederacy, many slaves had run away, mostly to US lines, where they gained their freedom. Despite threats from Rhoodie and the AWB, Lee made no effort to hide his views. President Lee At the urging and with the full backing of Jefferson Davis, who may not be reelected under the Confederate Constitution after his six-year term, Lee ran for President in the 1867 Confederate States presidential election, despite Davis's initial reservations about Lee's views on slavery. The Rivington men convinced Cameron to run against Lee's pro-abolition, anti-slavery Confederate Party, on a pro-slavery Patriot Party ticket with Louis Wigfall as his running mate, and they put their considerable resources into Cameron's campaign; their offices in Richmond serve as his campaign headquarters. They draw from their large supply of gold coins (in the form of Krugerrands). The Vampires attempt to oppose Lee through Elections while attempting to murder him with Eugene Buckingham chosen as their candidate. Lee' vampiric hunting abilities increased in the run up to the election. Lee achieved a narrow victory after he won Tennessee's electoral votes. Lee won the national election 69-50 in the Electoral College and by 32,000 popular votes out of 963,437 cast. He carried the Confederate states of Florida, Georgia, the newly-admitted Pennsyltucky, Catawba, Tennessee, and Virginia. Cameron wins the Confederate states of Alabama, Sequoyah, Louisiana, Mississippi, Apodidraskiana, and Texas. While Buckingham's death left the Vampires without a candidate. Following his loss, Cameron conceded defeat and paid a call to Lee at Arlington, promising to help rally the young nation behind its new president. Soon after the election, Lee received a history book that was stolen from the Rivington men from a former Confederate soldier, though he expects "Henry" had a hand in bringing it to him, which covered the Civil War and the original outcome that was supposed to happen without the AWB's intervention. Enraged at the lies that Rhoodie had told him about the future, Lee confronted the AWB leader by using the modern history book as proof of Rhoodie's dishonesty. Lee compared his fanaticism to that of John Brown. Faced with the accusations, Rhoodie promised to show the AWB's true colors to Lee. Thanks to the discovery of the book, this chronology can be compare to events as originally intended to happen, providing differences and similarities. In 1867, Russia offered Alaska to the United States with a purchase price of US$7 million, the U.S. is financially drained and could not purchase the territory. It continued as a Russian colony. At Lee's inauguration on March 4, 1868, AWB men tried to assassinate him by using Uzis, which resulted in the death of Lee's wife, Mary; his vice president, Albert Gallatin Brown, various dignitaries and generals, and many civilians. Police forces seized the AWB offices in Richmond after a fierce battle. Lee entered the stronghold to find more technological marvels (such as fluorescent light bulbs and air conditioning), books that document the increasing marginalization of racism from 1865 into the 21st century, and the efforts made to improve relations between blacks and whites. Lee showed the books to Confederate Representatives in the hope that the future's nearly-universal condemnation of slavery and racism will convince them to vote for his plan for gradual abolition. Appalled at the AWB attempted assassination, Cameron offered his services to Lee without reservation and was put in command of the hastily-remobilized Confederate forces. They were ready to do battle with the AWB men, and Lee declared martial law in the Rivington area. Battle with the AWB Men Confederate forces laid siege to Rivington and engaged the AWB, which used modern weaponry such as belt-fed machine guns, sniper rifles, mortars, barbed wire, and land mines to inflict heavy casualties on the Confederate forces. During the campaign, Henry Pleasants, an American soldier who was captured by Confederate forces late in the war and decided to remain in the Confederacy, where his skilled labor would be more in demand, conceived a similar scheme, as he did in the original timeline's Battle of the Crater. It is quickly accepted by commanding General Cameron, and President Lee ordered for Pleasants's name be kept a secret to avoid tipping off the Rivington men aware of Pleasants's real history. Unlike in the original battle, the infantry successfully capitalize on the opportunity. Despite suffering heavy casualties because of the vast technology gap, Confederate infantry destroyed the AWB's time machine during the fighting and seized the town after they broke through the AWB defenses. The few surviving AWB who were unable to escape back to their own time lose hope and surrender, some attempted to cross into Draka but were prevented from doing so. Soon after being captured, Rhoodie was killed by an enraged slave. Well aware of the Rivington men's cruelty and treason, the Confederates spared the slave from any harm. In Richmond, the Confederate Congress narrowly passed President Lee's gradual emancipation bill. Despite being technically freed, the C.S. black population continued to live in apartheid-like conditions, under a dehumanizing status like not even being allowed to have surnames. Post-AWB Aftermath Pharmacists copied the nitroglycerin pills brought by the AWB, and Lee hoped, with their help, to live to see the effects of his plan for emancipation. Meanwhile, a few of the stranded Afrikaner South Africans agree to help the Confederacy replicate their 21st-century technology from 2014 so that Lee could counter the Union in both its replica AK-47s and its greater industrial strength. Though the Confederacy has maintained strict neutrality in a war that the Union had started with the British Empire by invading Canada, Lee feared that the Union may later attempt a war of revenge against the Confederacy. Lee then had to deal with the Vampires. Lee's liberation of the Slaves was successful and starved out Vampires from within. Against Henry's wishes, Lee exposed the existence of Vampires to his allies of France and Britain. France, prior to the Revolution had developed an antidote to Vampirism. The hope of the spread of this information was that France and Britain would attack Transylvania and other Vampire locations, beginning a Vampire Genocide. Thanks to awareness of Vampire weaknesses, a brief alliance with President Grant of the Union, and the aid of a Silversmith named Reid from Texas, the Confederacy vanquished the Vampire Presence in the South. Lee rest assured that the Confederacy would remain the most technologically advanced country in the world for many decades to come. Unknown to Lee at the time, this Vampire genocide set into a motion several plans to retaliate against the nations responsible, particularly by the Vampire Count Dracula. A great sense of Pride to the Confederates was the nation's annexation of the moon due to the presence of a Confederate loyal Princess on the landmass. With nowhere else to regain lost strength or vent its military frustrations, the U.S. conquest of the Great Plains in the Indian Wars proceeded a little faster than in the original timeline, largely concluding by 1880. George Armstrong Custer and his younger brother Thomas Custer survived to 1881: as there was no Battle of Little Bighorn. In reaction to the Sioux uprising of 1862, the US Army conducted a war of extermination against them. Prior to the Great War, the Dakota Territory entered the Union as a single state know as Dakota (rather than North Dakota and South Dakota in the original timeline). While the US annexed territory from Canada. In the Presidential election of 1880, Republican James G. Blaine of Maine defeated the incumbent Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York due to people being tired of democrats conciliatory approach. The fact of Tilden´s vice president, James B. Macpherson (whom originally had died in the Civil War), giving a controversial speech about the fact that the war ending in 1862 saved more lives than if it had dragged on, didnt helped (It was warmly recieved on the South though). Blaine ran on a hard-line platform, which ultimately brought about a war against the C.S. over the latter's purchase of the Imperial Mexican provinces Sonora and Chihuahua from a cash-strapped Emperor Maximilian(Who originally did not survive until this time in 1881). This purchase allowed the C.S. to build their own Trans-Continental railway lines, along the southern route (as advocated by United States Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi prior to his ascension to Confederate President). The CS avoided having to use the heavily taxed United States lines through the Rocky Mountains further North. 1881-1882: Second Mexican War(Second War Between of the States) Early on in the war, C.S. troops under Jeb Stuart captured a large quantity of gold and silver ore from a Union mining town after successfully occupying the newly purchased Mexican provinces. Meanwhile, Union Colonel George Armstrong Custer launched a raid from Kansas into Sequoyah, using Gatling guns against Kiowa Indians and C.S. cavalry. The United Kingdom, France and Draka, both C.S. allies, blockaded and bombarded U.S. port cities such as Boston and New York City. During the war, the Mormons in Utah Territory rebelled by severing transcontinental communication, and transportation around Salt Lake City was disrupted. John Pope was appointed as the military governor, put down the revolt, and imposed martial law. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was classified as a political organization and the Mormon leaders were executed, including Brigham Young. The U.S. attempt to invade the now-C.S. state Virginia was easily thrown back by Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson as the U.S. struggled to find a man his equal. A key reason for the C.S. success in the war, in addition to fighting a defensive war, was that the C.S. was led by excellent generals like Jackson, while the United States' military, despite possessing an advantage in numbers and resources, suffered from incompetent leadership. William Rosecrans, the commander of the U.S. Army, said at one point that there was no overall strategy for winning the war whatsoever. He envisioned the opposing armies trading counteroffensives and believed the U.S. could win. This lack of strategy left the German/Prussian military observer, Alfred von Schlieffen, aghast (this purportedly influenced him to develop his own invasion plans for use by Germany against its enemies). Another factor was that the Confederacy possessed many more figures known as "Gunslingers", such as Jonah Hex, Ethan Edwards, and the Texan John Reid. While had the Union won the civil War, these individuals would have wandered the Lawless land, and gained heroic reputations despite the hostility towards Confederate Troops. The Confederate Victory, led to many of these Gunslingers, being promoted in the ranks of the Southern Army. There was also the aid of geniuses such as Arliss Loveless. The United States began to invade Louisville to repel the C.S. out of Kentucky. They were fought to a stalemate by the C.S., commanded by "Stonewall" Jackson. The Union's use of the technology of breech-loading artillery and repeating rifles was seen to hamper its ability to take a position. Under Jackson, the C.S. Army never went into U.S. territory which it did not control before the war. First, it did not have the resources for an offensive into hostile lands. Second, C.S. success hinged on the support of the United Kingdom and France, who felt they are aiding a smaller nation wrongfully attacked by a larger one. Invading U.S. territory might cost the C.S. its allies. Galled by orders to wage a purely defensive war, Jackson took them to the extreme, pioneering tactics of full-scale trench warfare, which devastated Louisville (akin to the original timeline's description of World War I). The Louisville campaign quickly bogged down for the United States, and resulted in a bloodbath with little territory gained. The United Kingdom and France continued to shell the Great Lakesports; France also shelled the small southern California towns of Los Angeles and San Pedro, while the British bombard San Francisco and raided the Federal mint there. The United States received some good news when a young volunteer cavalry colonel, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Fleming, John Henry and George Armstrong Custer routed a British division under Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon, invading Montana from Canada's western province of Saskatchewan. However, the British invaded northern Maine in the East and annexed it to the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Finally, facing defeat on almost all fronts, Republican president James G. Blaine was forced to capitulate. The U.S. surrendered on April 22, 1882, ending the Second Mexican War. C.S. President James Longstreet, in an attempt to appear the conciliator, offered generous terms to end the war, and asked the U.S. to officially recognize the C.S. acquisition of the two Mexican provinces. Most of northern Maine was annexed into the Canadian province of New Brunswick, demanded by the British for their participation in the war. President Blaine took the end of the war hard. Both American nations experienced major changes after the war. In the United States, many Republicans were voted out of Congress in the 1882 elections. Stung with the loss in the Second Mexican War, Blaine was ousted as president two years later. The elections of 1882 and 1884 began Democratic control over Congress and the White House, which lasted 36 years. The defeated United States, realizing it needed powerful allies to counter the C.S. alliances with the United Kingdom, France, and Draka began an alliance with the newly unified German Empire (helped by the fact that both countries had large German populations, the U.S. in particular being home to a sizable German community as well as an ever-increasing anti-British Irish population). It adopted many of the latter's military and economic practices under Chancellor Otto von Bludiron. This was likely influenced by Germany's brief occupation of the United Kingdom in 1871. Following the collapse of the Republican Party, the remaining members of the Party such as Ulysses S Grant, Jacob Ajax, Abner Dilworthy, and Silas P.Ratcliffe ally with U.S. socialists and lead left-wing Liberal Republicans into their fledgling Socialist Party. Meanwhile, Benjamin Butler lead most of the right-wing Conservative Republicans to the Democrats, which resulted in pushing the party even further to the right and causing a majority of it to adopt a hard-line foreign policy and the gearing of American society to nationalism and revanchism. Both of these groups were attracting many of the new European immigrants, who comprised the working class in the U.S. industrial cities thus the ideology of "Remembrance" was born. With the exodus of its right-most and left-most members, the remaining Republican party faded into obscurity, though it still limped along as a minor regional party representing only the Midwest (which was booming in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). They did not win the presidency or another Congressional majority. Anno Dracula 1887-1888: The Dracula Years In 1887(seven years earlier than would have occurred in the original timeline, Dracula launched an invasion of Great Britain. While he had originally proposed an invasion in the original timeline and been ignored, the many deaths and failure of their American endeavor convinced many of Dracula's cause and he struck along with an army of Vampires, successfully occupying Britain after killing Van Helsing and rebuilding the nation as a Vampire community in which criminals were jailed or impaled without trial. This new regime was faced by acts of rebellion inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders. Dracula's position of Prince Consort would be lost when Queen Victoria committed suicide. Dracula was forced to flee the country. 1889-1893: The Valentine Years Johnson P. "Funny Valentine" Annabour(A Democrat rather than a Republican) became President of the Union. He had the interior motif of finding the pieces of Jesus Christ scattered all over the United States, to accomplish this he headed the Steel Ball Run, a race across the Union, fortunately none of its track interceded with the Confederate States. He was killed by Johnny Joestar. 1895: Seven Days in Mayhem A Revolutionary Group attempted to Assassinate Dracula. 1897-1901: Texan Rebellion and Spanish-American War Seeking to expand their own territories, The Union entered into a war with Spain with had them gain Tropico, Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, which they quickly attempted to make States so as to appear larger than the C.S. while also surrounding it. Sort skirmishes broke out as the C.S. attempted to prevent the Union from acquiring the islands. During the war, the Union aided in Black nationalist uprisings in Texas led by Henry Belgrave, which broke away from the CS to establish an independent African-American nation in Texas, which became the United Societies of Africans, Mulattos, Quadroons, and Octoroons (AMQUO). 1898: Mollusc Invasion The Mollusc Invasion hit America Less hard than other nations. Most devastated was the United Kingdom. The Molluscs decimated Britain's vampire Population. US President Thomas Bracket Reed had Thomas Edison reengineer the Mollusc technology. This conflict strengthened previous alliances that would come to define the wars of the 20th century. This included the Central Powers: US, Germany, Russia, and Japan, and the Entente: CS, Britain, France and China. Tensions grew further when Mars was attacked and it was discovered the Molluscs had invaded the planet as well and were now seemingly gone for good, leaving much technology for war and only other nations to use it on. 1899: Yokai Town A ship full of Vampires, led by Genevieve Dieudonne, Captain Kostaki, Sergeant Daniel Dravot and Princess Christina Light, were exiled from Great Britain by the British Government(who has exiled their Vampire population). They were allowed to settle in Yōkai Town, the district of Tokyo set aside for Japan’s own vampires, an altogether strange and less human breed than the Nosferatu of Europe. Yet it was not the sanctuary they had hoped for, as a vicious murderer set vampire against vampire, and Yōkai Town was revealed to be more a prison than a refuge. Geneviève and her undead comrades were forced to face new enemies and the horrors hidden within the Temple of One Thousand Monsters. 20th Century 1907: The Airship Wars In 1907, the German Empire(choosing not to attack America as they were allies), instead attacked the United Kingdom with Airships, Beginning the Airship Wars. Across the Atlantic, Democratic President Mark Kimbly ordered the U.S. military to mobilize in late July, following Germany's lead. In response, C.S. President Rel Stuart ordered the C.S. military to do the same. Fighting soon broke out on their common border and the high seas. The United States officially brought the war to North America when Kimbly declared war on the C.S. in early August 1907. C.S. President Stuart responded in kind, although he had hoped to avoid a war. Stuart's speech, given in a tightly-packed public square in the capital of Richmond, Virginia decorated with statues of Southern war heroes George Washington from the Revolutionary War and Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston from the War of Secession, became particularly famous. Unlike the Second Mexican War, the C.S. allies the United Kingdom and France were now preoccupied fighting Germany (and the other Central Powers) in Europe, and the Draka had welcomed the AWB into its borders, where they had become sympathetic and so refused to help the C.S., leaving the North American powers to decide their front of the war without outside intervention. This left the C.S. outnumbered by the much more populous United States. Moreover, this new generation of industrialized, stalemated trench warfare granted even further advantages to the United States, with its greater industrial base. The C.S. was able to humiliate the U.S. in two wars in part because of the brilliant leadership of its generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson - but after their generation died out, the C.S. did not attempt to maintain a rigorous officer corps. Instead, the plantation-owning class formed a generational aristocracy (mirroring older European patterns): many of their current military leaders owed their positions simply to being the grandsons of actually skilled generals (i.e. JEB Stuart III, many other III's and IV's). In contrast, the United States was so utterly humiliated by its incompetent generals in the Second Mexican War that it "reformed along Prussian lines", improving the efficiency of not only its economy but actively trying to produce better military leadership. Even if the South did produce another Stonewall Jackson - which it didn't - this new era of attrition warfare in trenches removed the X-factor of a brilliant general outmaneuvering the enemy with weaker forces. Hoping to emulate General Robert E. Lee's successful Maryland Campaign, the C.S. Army of Northern Virginia (ANV) launched a massive invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania in August, targeting the northern de facto capital of Philadelphia. The ANV quickly overran the de jure capital of Washington, D.C. and pushed on through Maryland. Baltimore was surrounded by the ANV but was unable to take the city, which is resupplied and reinforced from the sea. The U.S. Army took a different approach and ordered the U.S. First Army under Lieutenant General George Custer and the U.S. Second Army under Major General John Pershing to cross the Ohio River and invade Kentucky. Although C.S. resistance is high, especially from river gunboats modeled after the original iron-clad U.S.S. Monitor of the 1860s, the U.S. succeeded in establishing a bridgehead on the southern bank. U.S. forces also invade western Virginia, aiming for the rail junction at Roanoke, Virginia, which came to be known as "Big Lick". A separate U.S. invasion of Sonora, intended to capture the sole C.S. Pacific Ocean port of Guaymas, soon becomes bogged down. The U.S. also launched attacks on Canada, specifically in Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. Perhaps the most successful maneuver during these early stages of war was the U.S. Navy's capture of the British base at Pearl Harbor in the Sandwich Islands in a surprise attack. At 1909, Kaiser Wilhelm set about to create Die Zwielichthelden, a German Counterpart to the British and French Leagues. Wilhelm was joined in this effort by the creation of an American League. However, they lacked access to figures such as Tom Sawyer, Irene Adler and John Reid, and so followed the Germans in gathering criminal individuals, modeled after Kane's attempt to form a League of Villains. This group was composed of Mabuse, Cagliari, Owen, Benett and Rotwang, whom attempted to cause infighting between the British and French leagues in the hopes of starting a war between the two nations. Japan-American War and Confederate-German War Both American offensives soon stalled, however; the U.S. armies found it difficult to push south, and the Army of Northern Virginia was slowed by the winter of 1907-1908. The C.S. invasion of Pennsylvania soon grinded to a halt at the Susquehanna River, only 50 miles from Philadelphia. From that high-water–mark, U.S. forces slowly started to push the C.S. back into occupied Maryland. Although the U.S. forces easily conquered the southern bank of the St. Lawrence River, crossing it proved another matter. The geography of the Niagara Peninsula soon bottlenecked the invading army. Though Winnipeg, Manitoba, as a major rail junction, lied relatively close to the U.S. border, the War Department allocated too few troops to capture it. Overseas, France surrendered and was occupied while British cities were decimated, specifically London. The Warring North America war was halted when both sides were attacked by outside Nations. Japan, which had conquered China, launched a surprise attack on America and the US engaged in a war with them while the U.S. ally Germany launched an attack on the C.S. while there was intended to be a coordinated attack between the two factions, Japan's attack halted this. The Confederate allied Floating City of Columbia repelled German invasion. However, the Germans had allies in the form of Dracula, who was granted sanctuary in the nation and rule of Transylvania once more. Columbia was destroyed by Vampires. The South defended themselves while the war with Japan continued in the US. All sides simply stop fighting, too exhausted to resume. 1912: US Election Theodore Roosevelt ran again as the Progressive Party candidate in 1912 with Charles Foster Kane as his running mate, while Woodrow Winthrop was elected President of the C.S. in 1910. Great War 1914: Declaration and Invasion The Freedo-Moronikan Imperial Crown Prince and Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia were both assassinated by a bomb while touring the city of Sarajevo in the newly annexed Osterlich province of Markovia in June 1914. The Osterlich government quickly learns that a Serbian group was responsible, and the Freedo-Moronikan Empire quickly accused the government of nearby Serbia of colluding with the terrorists. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia backed Serbia, while Fuerher Bradley(replacing Kaiser Wilhelm II in coup, of Germany backed Freedo-Moronika(Unknown to all Bradley was part of a Cabal of individuals who's leader seemed to become a God. The major powers of each system mobilized their militaries, effectively signifying their intent to go to war. In August 1914, the "Great War" begins, initially putting Great Britain, France, and Russia against the Empires of Germany and Freedonia-Moronika. After the Airship Wars, the technology had been outlawed. Trench warfare became ubiquitous as each side dug in for protection from machine guns. Troops huddled in these trenches as heavy artillery in their rear pounds the enemy lines night and day. They dreaded the order "Over the top!" which meant they had to leave the safety of their lines to charge into No man's land, in the hope of capturing the enemy trenches on the other side. The US, drawing on German chemical expertise, seeked to push forward using chemical warfare. The use of chlorine gas, however, made only minor gains. Far from the quick, glorious conquest each side had imagined, the "Great War" became a long, bloody stalemate. Early in 1915, another front opened when the Utah Mormons attempted to secede from the United States and declare themselves the independent nation of Deseret. Mormon relations with the rest of the country had been hostile since the Utah War of the 1850s and the brief uprising during the Second Mexican War. They wrongly believed that the distracted U.S. government would be unable to subdue them. However, as Utah is on one of the major transcontinental rail lines, President Roosevelt stated the U.S. would not tolerate unlawful rebellion. The Mormon rebellion raged until mid-1916, when it was finally crushed and Salt Lake City was captured. Utah was then placed under military rule by Roosevelt, a situation that would continue until the 1930s. In the autumn of 1915, as the armies of the C.S. are fighting those of the United States along the border regions, blacks in the C.S. rise up in revolt. Bitter over their treatment by whites, and fueled by a rhetoric of Marxism and the teachings of Abraham Lincoln, the blacks declare "Red Revolution" in several areas across the C.S. and establish "socialist republics", while massacring whites and seeking justice against their former white masters; most trials are shams, however, and the executions brutal. These rebellions are gradually crushed by 1916 despite intervention by Texas and the Union, although white justice mellows somewhat as thoughts are preoccupied with winning the war. Ironically, the lasting effect of the "Red Revolt" is to make white people start to believe in the military potential of blacks. On November 2 1916, Theodore Roosevelt was assassinated while personally Quelling a Chicago Worker's Riot by sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Charles Foster Kane became President and launched a retaliatory strike on the Confederacy with the help of "The Twilight Heroes". He captured C.S. President Woodrow Winthrop and locked him in a prototype of his proposed "Euthanization Chambers" built by Rotwang. This occurred very close on the same day as Confederate elections when Gabriel Semmes, Winthrop´s VicePresident defeated Radical Liberal candidate Doroteo Arango (AKA Pancho Villa) in the 1915 C.S. Presidential Election. 1916:Slaughter Taking advantage of C.S. plight, the U.S. First Army marched into western Tennessee after slogging through western Kentucky, while the C.S. Army of Northern Virginia was pushed south toward Washington, D.C., a new armored technical advance called the "barrel" (referred to as a tank by the British, in this timeline the latter term never catches on) was introduced to combat for the first time by U.S. forces operating in the Roanoke River Valley of southwestern Virginia. In this case, as in the original timeline, the name of the vehicle comes from the cover name used. In Great Britain, those assembling the vehicle were told they were mobile water tanks; in this time line, they are coded 'barrel,' though there is some indication something called a 'barrel' was coming. Private Reginald Bartlett(relative of original timeline President Josiah Bartlett), escaping with a C.S. naval officer, heard U.S. soldiers singing a song, "Roll Out the Barrels". While in the C.S. state of Tennessee, Lieutenant General Custer transformed his tactics for cavalry into a doctrine for the new barrels (which anticipated the German "blitzkrieg" tactics of World War II in the original timeline), but the U.S. War Department was not interested. When Custer's summer offensive began, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were lost attacking C.S. lines, and the new barrels, deployed singly in an infantry support role rather than massed as an armored fist, broke down in the hilly terrain to little effect. The lack of British troops in Canada meant that the U.S., while initially held back by the Canadians, slowly advanced toward their triple objectives of Quebec City, Toronto, and Winnipeg. Largely thanks to the efforts of Irving Morrell, U.S. forces pushed up to Banff, Albertain the Canadian Rockies and cut off the second of three mountain passes that connect the Pacific coast to the rest of Canada. At sea, the great Battle of the Three Navies was fought, with the U.S. on one side and the United Kingdom and Japan on the other. This prevented the "Entente" from recapturing the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). With the Central Pacific in American hands, a U.S. Navy flotilla made its way south toward Cape Horn and around to the Atlantic, with the intent of cutting off Argentine grain and beef shipments to Great Britain. On the Maryland front, the state was cleared of C.S. soldiers, save for those holding Washington, the de jure U.S. capital. In the autumn, the U.S. continued to attack the state capital of Nashville, Tennessee to no avail, raising the spectre of a possible Democratic loss at the polls, and the possibility that a Socialist President will seek peace with the C.S. and renounce all the bloody gains. Except for a local attack on the Roanoke Front that pushed the U.S. out of western Virginia, the C.S. stayed on the defensive through the autumn, attempting to drain the U.S. dry in the hope that the U.S. population would become sick of the war. Unhappiness Under Kane escalated and he would lose to Socialist Eugene V. Debs in the 1916 November election. He refused to give up his power. Already seen as a tyrant, Debs led a Revolution against Kane. In Richmond, however, the hopes of new President Semmes(a descendent of naval commander Raphael Semmes), elected in 1915, and his Cabinet were dashed. The U.S. government has four years to crush the C.S. before needing to seek re-election, while the C.S. were running out of white soldiers to further the conflict. President Kane forced a bill to authorize the training and arming of black troops to serve, with civil rights (excepting interracial marriage) to follow after the war, including citizenship in the C.S. Gradually Kane led the C.S. into greater levels of oppression, class division and bureaucratic incompetence and corruption. Meanwhile, the U.S. began the process of formally returning Kentucky to the Union. In Europe, the war seems little changed from the original timeline, with the exception of the French fortress of Verdun's capture by the Germans, and an apparently heavier use of North African infantry by the French Army. In addition, Italy remained neutral in the conflict and the "Easter Rising" by the nascent Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Dublin was not put down, spreading to the rest of Ireland. 1917: Breakthroughs Lieutenant General Custer secretly developed a scheme for the U.S. to quickly win the war, using a massed-barrel formation, despite its prohibition by the War Department. Disguising his true intentions to all but his adjutant, Major Abner Dowling, and Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell, and lying to President Kane, Custer launched his Barrel Roll Offensive on Remembrance Day — April 22, 1917 — and quickly broke through the C.S. trench lines north of the Tennessee capital of Nashville. The C.S. withdrew to a line centered on Nashville, where Custer hit them again three weeks later by outflanking the city using a plan concocted by Morrell. Nashville soon fell, despite the best efforts of the newly formed C.S. colored regiments to stave off Custer's barrels, and the state capital became the U.S. First Army's headquarters. From Nashville, in July, Custer attacked the C.S. lines in the direction of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Near Nolensville the U.S. received a C.S. request for a local armistice. President Kane assents, and peace on the North American front comes to Tennessee a week before the rest of the U.S. – C.S. frontline. Custer was outraged at the halt, but Kane explained that it would be difficult for the U.S. to defend the large salient into Tennessee it had captured, and at the same time, the southeastern chunk of Kentucky that still remained in C.S. hands would prove a nuisance in postwar years as Kentuckians elected to the C.S. Congress would constantly demand a new war against the U.S. to recapture lost territory in their state. Kane's plan called for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from captured Tennessee territory in exchange for all remaining parts of Kentucky. On the same day that the "Barrel Roll Offensive" began in Tennessee, the U.S. Army in northern Virginia attacked southward toward Manassas(the site of two major battles fought in the War of Secession) at the same time that U.S. troops entered occupied Washington, D.C. The de jure ''U.S. capital was recaptured after several days of intense street fighting, which leveled the city and its famous landmarks (such as the Washington Monument and the White House). In northern Virginia, several U.S. attacks forced the C.S. Army of Northern Virginia to retreat south. In battles at Round Hill, Centreville, and Bull Run (at the same site of a famous War of Secession battle), rear-guard actions led by a few battered batteries of the "First Richmond Howitzers" prevented the complete destruction of the latest incarnation of Robert E. Lee's fabled army. However, it was obvious the war is on the verge of being lost; this did not sit well with C.S. soldiers, who reckoned the war won only a few months before. The C.S. started sending peace feelers to Philadelphia as early as the fall of Nashville, but Kane refused to grant a cease-fire until certain that the C.S. was severely hammered elsewhere. The last hammers on the C.S. Army came in late July, when fighting reaches the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, only fifty miles from the C.S. capital. With a cease-fire already in effect in Tennessee, Sequoyah was overrun, and fighting in Texas and Arkansas diminishing, the C.S. agreed to a general armistice on land and at sea. For the first time since August 1914, the guns fell silent in North America. At sea, the submarine CSS ''Bonefish, led by C.S. Navy officer Roger Kimball, carried out a sneak attack on the USS Ericsson (named for Swedish-born inventor/engineer John Ericsson who developed the iron-clad ships and transformation of naval power during the War of Secession) despite being fully aware of the war's end. For a few years after the war, both the U.S. and C.S. believed that the ship's destruction was the work of the British Royal Navy, the war between the U.S. and the British Empire at sea still not over at this point. In Europe, mutinies in the French Republic Army proved serious enough to lead to France's exit from the war (in reality, these mutinies — caused by French soldiers' disgust at being ordered into suicidal and utterly pointless attacks across "no-man's" land — resulted in the French Army command agreeing to order no more offensives in exchange for French soldiers continuing to fight only defensively until the Hundred Days Offensive). Without the U.S. troops, this caused France to surrender. The Russian Empire was threatened by revolution and anarchy which was halted by an invasion by Germany, which had defeated France and now took the weakened nation, in the process rescuing Princess Anastasia, leaving only the Confederate States and the United Kingdom to fight against the United States, Germany, Transylvania and Freedonia-Moronika. Italy remained neutral and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) was subjugated by Count Dracula and his Vampires, who effectively assimilated the territory in an attempt to create a New Vampire Homeland. This New Transylvania later joined the war on the side of the "Central Powers". In South America, Brazil abandoned the neutrality it had held since the beginning of the War and allied with Chile and Paraguay (who supported the "Central Powers") against Argentina (which supported the "Allies" (Entente), threatening the South Atlantic supply line to Britain. In Canada, Custer's barrel methods were used to break through the Anglo-Canadian lines, leading to the fall of Quebec City and Winnipeg. The United States establishes the Republic of Quebec out of the Canadian province, and U.S. and French-speaking "Québécois" forces charged towards Toronto, Canada. By this point the C.S. has been defeated, and with all the U.S. soldiers on the U.S. – C.S. Front now ready to head to Canada, the British Empire requested a cease-fire, which was granted in early June 1917. With U.S.–German-Brazilian naval operations cutting off the United Kingdom from its Argentine and Australian food suppliers, the United Kingdom sued for peace later that summer; it was the last opponent of the "Quadruple Entente" still in the war. Despite an attempted coup in Germany Central which took the like Of Fuerher Bradley and his son(in actuality a suppression of the Homunculi creatures controlling the government), Germany still remained in the war and emerged victorious. Charles Foster Kane still refused to leave Office and a revolution led by Debs forcibly removed him and had him executed with Debs becoming the New President. Armistice: Post War The terms of surrender imposed upon the Entente by the Quadruple Alliance were harsh. * Britain gave control of Canada, Newfoundland, the Bahamas, and Bermuda to the United States. (The half of Maine lost during the Second Mexican War was returned, with some additional territory from New Brunswick.) * The German Empire annexed the portion of Lorraine left to France after the Franco-Prussian War. * Belgium remained under German occupation and the Netherlands and Denmark came under German influence. * The Belgian Congo became a German colony. * Freedonia-Moronika received Albania and Serbia as economic satellites. New countries created as a result of this war included the following: * The Republic of Quebec, allied to the United States * The Republic of Ireland, allied to both the United States and Germany * The Kingdom of Poland and an officially independent Ukraine (both allied to the Germans). U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing helped negotiate these terms. 1918: Vampire War Count Dracula and the Nation of Transylvania attempted a brief hostile takeover of Africa and Germany, turning many including the Red Baron into Vampires. The Undead army had some success but were defeated by Germany, Draka and Wakanda(not working together). Dracula escaped persecution using a Hungarian Body Double named "Bela". The American Empire 1918: Old Animosities Rekindled The United States celebrated during 1918, having finally taken revenge on the C.S., with parades and parties lasting well into the autumn. President Debs and General Custer (who was now a four-star general, Debs having promoted the aging officer in Nashville towards the end of the war) rode together in the Philadelphia Remembrance Day Parade, the biggest to date. The tradition of showing the national flag upside down to show distress was put aside to show that the U.S. had reversed the outcomes of 1862 and 1882. Longer term ramifications of war begin to be felt, and both the U.S. and C.S. navies had to deploy minesweepers to clear their harbors, an activity which continued through to the late 1920s and early 1930s. Not everyone in the victorious United States shared in the celebration of the victory, however. Returning veterans found scabs working for cheaper wages in the factories and mines they worked at before going away to fight. More veterans found themselves being put down by factory owners, and went on strike in industrial centers like Pittsburgh and Toledo. The owners deploy the "Pinkertons" and police against the strikers, but the war veterans, who had faced far worse challenges in the trenches, repelled them. The country seemed to be on the verge of revolution, and the Socialist Party capitalized on gains among the lower classes. In November 1918, they captured the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time, Cementing Debs's future plans for domestic and foreign affairs. Meanwhile, citizens of the defeated and truncated C.S. were hardly in a mood to celebrate. President Debs forced humiliating terms upon them in return for peace, President Semmes having no choice but to agree to them. Significant amounts of territory were lost: Kentucky had already rejoined the Union in 1916; western Texas had been admitted into the Union in 1917 as the State of Houston (named after former president and governor of Texas Sam Houston who was staunchly opposed to secession as a Southern Unionist during the War of Secession), with its capital at Lubbock, and the Territory of Sequoyah was under occupation. Pieces of northeastern Arkansas, northwestern Sonora, and Virginia north of the Rappahannock River held by U.S. troops at the Armistice were also annexed into Missouri, New Mexico (a state that comprised our modern American states New Mexico and Arizona), and West Virginia respectively. In addition, the post-war settlement severely curtailed the size of the C.S. Army and Navy, and demanded the payment of massive reparations to Philadelphia. These terms contributed further to C.S. anger. The reparations caused the C.S. dollar to spiral out of control, as hyperinflation ruined the C.S. economy. (This is directly analogous to the inflation in the newly proclaimed German Republic at Weimar after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles). As a result, anti-U.S. sentiment among C.S. whites increased, and several reactionary political parties form across the C.S.. One of these fringe groups is the Freedom Party, founded by Anthony Dresser in Richmond, Virginia, sometime after the end of the "Great War" (in the original history, the original early founder of the then-fringe National Socialist German Workers Party Nazi Party of whom the Freedom Party mirrors — later ousted by Adolf Hitler — was named Anton Drexler). President Debs forced London to recognize the Republic of Quebec (established in April 1917 as the war in Canada was drawing to a close) and the Republic of Ireland (including all of the largely Loyalist Ulster in northern Ireland), and to relinquish claims to the Atlantic island chains of the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Sandwich Islands, Newfoundland, and all of the Dominion of Canada in North America. The German Empire annexed the French Congo and Belgian Congo colonies in central Africa, occupied Belgium, and set up the puppet states of Ukraine and the Kingdom of Poland, which "had the same relation to Germany as Quebec has to" the United States of America. The exact status of the Baltic states (Pottsylvania, Latveria, and Laurania) was unsure, but they were mentioned as being neutral. In Canada, the Dominion government was declared an illegal assembly. The U.S. Army set up its occupation headquarters in Winnipeg and turned each province into a military district. The U.S. Army uses a harsh policy of hostage-taking to prevent Canadians from rising up. If a U.S. soldier was shot or another act of rebellion occurred, U.S. forces took 10 to 30 hostages and demanded that the perpetrator turn him or herself in or the hostages will be executed by firing squad. "Occupied Canada" was declared U.S. territory as part of the new "American Empire", "stretching from the Gulf of California to the Arctic Ocean." In 1919, General George Custer requested and was granted the post of governor-general of "Occupied Canada" in retribution for what he perceived to be the Canadian "murder" of his brother Tom in the previous fighting of 1881. 1919-1924: Blood & Iron The Freedom Party achieved success in Richmond. Its chief speaker — a vengeful, spiteful, and bitter ex-sergeant named Jake Featherston— harangued crowds at public meetings and squares about how the C.S. has been "stabbed in the back" by the Whig Party, the War Department, and, most of all, the black minority, who rose up in Red rebellion in 1915. Featherston's angry mannerisms connected him and his Party to the masses, and soon the Freedom Party became the white man's proto-version of the Socialists popular with C.S. blacks and Northerners in the U.S. Featherston comes to be seen as the Party's true leader, and the "Sarge" wins the Party's leadership in a power struggle against Dresser in mid-1919. Once comfortably settled in his new office, Featherston reorganized the Freedom Party into a political party revolving around his goals and ambitions, and white-shirted "stalwarts" are soon elected into the C.S. Congress, while their assault squads take on Featherston's enemies. The victorious United States, with its "American Empire", ignored political events occurring in the C.S. Most members of the American Congress paid no attention to the rise of the Freedom Party, save for Flora Hamburger, a worried Socialist Representative from New York City. Despite her calls for action, her party took no notice on either the C.S. Freedom party of the rise of Al Capone in the Socialist party, instead focusing on voting Eugene Debs out of office in 1920. The Socialists succeed, with their candidate Upton Sinclair defeating Debs in the election that November. Sinclair was inaugurated president of the United States on March 4, 1921 to much rejoicing from the Socialist party. Later in 1921, Jake Featherston runs for office against Wade Hampton V of the Whigs and Ainsworth Layne of the Radical Liberals. Featherston loses by a narrow margin to Hampton, but resolves to fight on. In 1923, Grady Calkins, a deranged Freedom Party stalwart, assassinates President Hampton at a Birmingham, Alabama rally. The Freedom Party immediately begins to lose support, suffering losses in the elections of 1923 and 1925. Another factor limiting the Freedom Party's chances for success is American President Sinclair's lifting of the war reparations (requested by Hampton's successor, Burton Mitchel), which removes a key plank from the Freedom Party's platform. Featherston and his most ardent stalwarts spend the next several years in the "political wilderness" (analogous to the Nazi Party's popularity and status post-Munich Beer Hall Putsch). In U.S.-occupied Canada, Governor-General Custer rules the former Dominion with an iron-felt glove, surviving several assassination attempts by Manitoban farmer Arthur McGregor. Custer killed McGregor in the farmer's final attempt as he was parading through Winnipeg, Manitoba. At this point, the war hero is retiring, having been forced out by the new Socialist administration. Sinclair aimed to return the U.S. to the days of peace, hoping that by treating its neighbors with respect there will never be another war. He was popular enough to win re-election in 1924 — the same year the Freedom Party began to involve its stalwarts in the Mexican Civil War, an action where the U.S. supported the Republican rebels, but its meager support was limited, compared to the supplies, weapons, and barrels that the C.S. gave to Emperor Maximilian III. 1924-1934: The Centre Cannot Hold The new medium of "the wireless" (original timeline's radio) offered novel ways for politicians to reach the people. Jake Featherston was the first politician to realize its potential, and soon people sitting in their homes could hear his raspy, thundery voice shouting from their radio sets, telling them the "truth" about the Yankees, Whigs, and blacks. For the U.S. things suddenly got much worse when, the same year Eugene Debs passed away in 1926, Sinclair was forced to flee the country under threat of death and was replaced by Al Capone, a former mobster who arranged the disappearances of his competition, causing Debs's intended successor Upton Sinclair to flee the country. Capone proceeded to rule over the newly formed USSA with a brutal, repressive fist of iron, establishing a cult of personality around himself, exiling and executing his political rivals and ruling the country more brutally and ruthlessly (and incompetently) than any of the robber barons who were previously deposed. In the C.S., Even with this broadened appeal to the masses, the Freedom Party's hopes ebbed further with Featherston's defeat at the polls in 1927 against incumbent Burton Mitchel III. The C.S. people were just starting to enjoy the fruits of peace and prosperity, and the War and black uprisings were coming to be seen as part of the past, despite Featherston and his stalwarts, doing their utmost to keep them alive in the collective memory. Things changed when, in early 1929, the world's stock markets crash and financial and economic depression results. In the C.S, Burton Mitchel III was blamed. In the U.S. which came out of the 1920s with a booming economy after Capone was dethroned and replaced with Hosead Blackford, with the Canadian revolt having been crushed in 1925, new President Blackford took the heat, with shantytowns and slums being named "Blackfordburgs". Millions lost their jobs, and in Utah, (occupied since 1916), a fanatical Mormon sniper gunned down Governor-General John J. Pershing. Japan and the U.S. went to war in 1932 after Japan was caught smuggling weapons to the occupied Canadian province of British Columbia by the warship USS Remembrance, and Japanese bombers attacked Los Angeles. During the 1932 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, the party had decided on two front runners: California Congressman Joe Steele, and; incumbent Governor of New York Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, after two days of votes, neither candidate had the needed two-thirds majority, although Roosevelt had a slight edge. Realizing he might lose after another day of voting, Steele directed one of his aides Vince "The Hammer" Scriabin to have Roosevelt burned alive at the New York State Executive Mansion in Albany. Steele's other assistants Lazar Kagan and Stas Mikoian were not privy to the initial planning. However, Charlie Sullivan, by happenstance, overheard Scriabin on the phone giving the order for the arson. Steele never knew this. However, in light of Sullivan's "fairness" in his reporting, Steele personally met with Sullivan and promised that Sullivan would always have access to Steele's camp. When the New York State Executive Mansion was set ablaze, Roosevelt was burned alive in the fire since he could not escape in time due to him being rendered immobile by polio. His wife Eleanor and several members of the mansion staff were also killed in the fire. The Roosevelts were then buried in Hyde Park, New Yorkfollowing their deaths. With Roosevelt dead, the Democratic Party has little choice but to nominate Steele as their candidate for the 1932 Presidential election with John Nance Garner of Texas as his running mate, with whom Steele had reached an early arrangement. Steele would go on to defeat Blackford and become the 32nd President of the United States. At the same time in the C.S., whole cities are echoing to the boot-steps of marching Freedom Party stalwarts, their ranks flowing once more with angry citizens, preparing for Election Day 1933. Jake Featherston attacked the Mitchel C.S. Administration with the venom and hate, blaming Mitchel for the Crash, and condemning his ineffectual response to the floods that devastated the Mississippi River valley in 1927. The C.S. responds well to Featherston's rants. On taking the oath of office on March 4, 1934, the world holds its breath: "Freedom" is on the march. In Europe, the storm clouds were also beginning to gather. In Russia, the Germans had instilled a Constitutional Monarchy, keeping Anastasia alive but in reduced power with the sorcerer Rasputin blamed for the deaths of the Romanovs.Germany installed Vladimir Lenin in the role of Prime Minister. Lenin won reelection in 1920 but died in 1924, being succeeded by Leon Trotsky. While Trotsky would would be outvoted upon completion of Lenin's term. The new rules installed by Germany favored the Communists since they would remain allies to Germany, allowing Trotsky to later run for the position again. Outside election Russia remains a primarily agricultural, backward country. Frequent anti-Semitic pogroms and foreign loans manage to deflect further restlessness but the latter were a contributing factor in the 1929 crash when Freedonia-Moronika demanded the repayment of a loan that Russia was unable to fulfill. Freedonia-Moronika itself remains a united empire but only the Freedonians and Moronikans feel any loyalty to the Bombhurst Dynasty monarchs. In fact, the multi-ethnic federation seems to be held together only by German financial and military aid. The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) also appeared to be in the same boat, undertaking the genocide of its Armenian population. Despite strong censure from the USSR, and more lukewarm protests from Berlin, the Turks continue the genocide until the Ottoman Empire is nearly devoid of Armenians. Presidents of the Union * #1 George Washington (Independent, 1789-1797) * #2 John Adams (Federalist, 1797-1801) * #3 Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican, 1801-1809) * #4 Henry Waldegrave(Democratic-Republican, 1809-1817) * #5 Johnny Tremain (Democratic-Republican, 1817-1825) * #6 Henry Clay(Democratic-Republican, 1825-1829) * #7 Simon Suggs(Democrat, 1829-1832) * #8 Derrick Van Bummel(Democrat, 1832-1836) * #9 Quentin Trembley(Whig, 11836-1841) * #10 Augustine St.Claire(Whig, later none, 1841-1845) * #11 Puffer Hopkins(Democrat, 1845-1849) * #12 David Rice Atchison(Democrat,1849) * #13. John A.B.C. Smith(Whig, 1849-1853) * #14 Jonathan Pride(Whig, 1853-1857) * #15 Russel Moreland(Democrat, 1857-1861) * #16 Abraham Lincoln(Republican, 1861–1862) * #17. Asa Trenchard(Republican.1862-1865) * #18. Horatio Seymour(Democrat, 1865–1869) * #19.Ulysses S.Grant(Republican(1869-1877) * #20 Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat, 1877-1881) * #21 James G. Blaine (Republican, 1881–1885) * #22 William Le Petomane(Democrat, 1885–1889) * #23 Johnson "Funny Valentine" Annabour(Democrat, 1889-1893) * #24 Richard Hunter(Democrat)1893-1897 * #25 Thomas Brackett Reed(Democrat, 1897-1902) * #26 Mark Kimbly(Democrat, 1902-1909) * #27 Matthew Harrison Brady (Socialist,1909-1913) * #28 Theodore Roosevelt (Democrat, 1913–1916) * #29 Charles Foster Kane(Democrat, 1916-1917) * #30 Eugene V Debs(Socialist,1917-1921) * #31 Upton Sinclair(Socialist,1921-1926) * #32 Al Capone(Socialist,1926-1929) * #33 Hosea Blackford(Socialist,1929-1933) Category:Alternate Universes